Daniel could only move his eyes. Cupcakes held at his sides, he could only watch as the two technicians slid a platform under him and hauled him up onto a low cart. Before long he was moving, for what seemed like hours, down corridors and hallways. Left, right. Another right. Two doors opened before his eyes. He briefly read "long term storage" before he was pushed into a cold freezer and deposited on yet another shelf.
He was tired of being treated like property, but he was a cake now, after all. He heard Robin drop next to him. He could hear the two lab coats talking. The guy sounded horrible. Daniel felt kind of sorry for the girl.
"Hey, what do you think he tastes like, Melody? Cake, or people?"
"Stop it, Rick. I know you're new, but you know we can't eat them, they're human beings!"
Rick laughed. "Yeah, sure. Could I do this to a human being?"
Rick took a finger and scooped some frosting off of Daniel's torso, before sticking it in Melody's mouth. She gagged, and spit it out onto the floor, furious. Some of it had gone down her throat anyway.
"What the hell do you think you're doing? You know what could happen if we eat these... cakes..." her voice dropped off, and she began to turn pale, suddenly very worried.
"Hey, those are just stories. Don't worry about it, you aren't going to change into anything."
Melody whirled on him. "And how do you know that? What if I do? I swear, I'll take you with me. We'll both end up in here!"
The small girl was furious. She pushed her cart as fast as possible toward the freezer door. Rick shouted after her. Daniel couldn't hear or see any more, they were too far away. But the brief exchange had given him a lot to think about.
Daniel stared blankly ahead, gazing into the darkness of the freezer, and waited.
* * *
Melody threw the door of her apartment open, furious over the events of the day. Rick knew the protocols when he completed his training at the transformation center. It was his first day working with the food accident victims, but how could he be so completely stupid?
They had no way of knowing what would happen if a person were to ingest the transformed cells of another human being. Since the cells were living tissue, they behaved much like the cells of any other organism. However, they were composed of food matter, and were able to be ingested like any normal type of food.
Melody thought there might be a way to reactivate the human genomes present in the cells, and then return the cakes and puddings back into humans. Her research had been centered on the problem for over a year now. She was working on a cure, and while it showed promise, it was nowhere near ready yet for testing.
Melody had filed a report with Doctor Laura, and Rick had been suspended, but it was small comfort to Melody. As far as she was concerned, the damage had been done.
The long haired, thin brunette looked into the bathroom mirror as she disrobed for bed, paranoid that her fingernails would turn to chocolate, or that she would start tasting sugar in her mouth.
"So far, so good."
Exhausted, Melody got into bed and pulled the covers over herself. Her mind was racing, and she kept envisioning herself as different cakes. Her arms covered in raspberries. Her fingers turned to candy canes. What if her hair spun itself into pink sugar, or her nipples twisted into peppermints? If she were a cake, would her legs fuse together, or would her face disappear? That only happened very rarely. It was horrible to watch someone's mouth and nose close up, to see their eyes sink into a blank frosted surface.
"But what if it happens to me?" she thought. It was only in the wee hours of the night that sleep came for her.
* * *
The next morning, sunlight filtered in to her apartment window, waking Melody as it always did. She yawned and stretched, feeling anxious and sweaty. She rubbed her arm. It felt sticky. Melody's eyes shot open in horror.
No...
Her nearly nude body was covered in white frosting. She pulled up her nightgown, just in time to watch her white breasts retreat into her body and flatten out. Green frosting bubbled and pushed its way out from the surface of her new, quite male, looking chest.